GAMBIER, Ohio – Tensions ran high at McBride Field on Saturday, as the Kenyon College field hockey team hosted the DePauw University Tigers in a rematch of last year's North Coast Athletic Conference (NCAC) tournament championship game. In the end, the Ladies yielded a pair of second-half goals and fell to DePauw by a final score of 2-1.

DePauw scored the game's first goal off the stick of the conference's leading scorer, Paige Berliner. About 18 minutes into the second half, Berliner connected on a shot that Kenyon goalkeeper Sarah Speroff was tracking. Speroff stretched to her left and reached out her arm, but the shot glanced off her glove and into the top right corner of the cage.

Just over three minutes later, the Ladies responded on a goal from junior Shannon Hart. She backhanded a low liner from the left side of the arc, through traffic and into the bottom right corner of the goal. It was Hart's first goal of the season.

Over the next five minutes, the Tigers executed eight penalty corners, but came away with nothing. However, 40 seconds after the last of those penalty corners, DePauw's Kate Milner passed the ball in front of the cage where it was tipped in by Reilly Bruce, giving the Tigers a 2-1 advantage with just under six minutes to play. The goal was Bruce's tenth of the season and the assist was Milner's NCAC-leading 11th of the season.

After firing off just four shots in the first half, DePauw ended up outshooting the Ladies 17-2 in the second half and 21-9 overall. Berliner had five shots alone in the second half, after being shutout in the first.

In the victory, DePauw goalkeeper Sarah Foye needed only to make one save. Speroff, on the other hand, tallied nine saves for the Ladies.

The result gave the two teams a split in the season series, but DePauw, 13-3 overall, maintains the top spot in the conference standings with a 10-1 mark. The loss for Kenyon drops the Ladies to third place in the standings with an NCAC mark of 9-3 and an overall mark of 11-5.

Up next for the Kenyon women is a rematch with Earlham College, the team that handed the Ladies their first conference loss earlier this year. Start time for that game is scheduled for noon on Sunday at McBride Field.